Every cell contains hundreds of mitochondria, vital organelles tightly integrated into many core cellular processes, and responsible for producing adenosine triphosphate, a chemical energy store molecule used to power the cell. Unfortunately mitochondria become dysfunctional with age, and this is thought to be an important contribution to degenerative aging. A variety of means to address this issue exist or are under development, some more direct and ambitious than others.
Cells will readily take up whole mitochondria from the surrounding tissue environment and make use of them. Thus it is possible to introduce large numbers of mitochondria harvested from cell cultures into a tissue in order to largely replace the native mitochondria. Provided that age-related mechanisms of damage and dysfunction that degrade the effectiveness of mitochondrial populations act slowly, then introducing young, functional mitochondria into an old individual should produce a lasting benefit.
This approach of mitochondrial transplantation has been assessed in small studies using mice, and shown to be feasible. The primary challenge facing those who seek to bring this form of therapy to human patients lies in scaling up existing ad-hoc manufacturing protocols developed for animal studies in order to allow the robust, reliable manufacture of very large batches of human mitochondria. That is where most of the efforts of companies such as cellvie and Mitrix Bio have focused, on the infrastructure of producing mitochondria for transplantation. This has been underway for a few years now, and it seems Mitrix Bio is at the point of conducting an initial safety trial in human volunteers, to start later this year.
Physicist, 90, joins experimental trial to challenge age limits
A new clinical effort aimed at testing mitochondrial transplantation for age reversal is drawing attention - not only for its scientific ambition, but for the identity of its first participant. John G Cramer, a 90-year-old emeritus professor of physics at the University of Washington, has announced he will undergo a novel therapy that uses bioreactor-grown mitochondria, a technology developed by biotech startup Mitrix Bio. The project will be overseen by a collaborative team of researchers from Stanford, UCLA, Northwell Health New York and Mitrix Bio, and is expected to begin on 1 August. It also opens the door to five additional volunteers over 55 or with chronic disease to join as early participants in this exploratory human intervention.
90-Year-Old Physics Professor Launches First Attempt to Break Human Age Barrier (PDF)
Mitrix, a startup launched in 2020 by prominent Silicon Valley scientists and entrepreneurs, has beentesting transplantation of mitochondria not only to cure disease but for a more audacious goal: toreverse human aging. Their bioreactor technology is designed to provide the huge volumes ofautologous (self-derived) age-reset mitochondria needed to restore cellular energetics and reverse decades of losses in the elderly body.
Leveraging his experience as an experimental physicist, Dr. Cramer has analyzed the latest life- and health-extension drugs. Most are not potent enough to do the job, but he has zeroed in on two that show promise: epigenetic reprogramming, a technique that Silicon Valley billionaires like Jeff Bezos have poured billions into, and mitochondrial transplantation, another fast-growing contender.
"I've analyzed the longevity treatments, and mitochondrial transplantation is the first that seems potentially safe and powerful enough to get someone past 122 in good health. At the age of 90 I'm the oldest person set to try this technology, so if this works, nobody will be able to catch up. I'll always be the oldest young person in history. The senior-est of senior citizens. And the same treatment, if proven safe and effective, might be used to save thousands of people: children with genetic diseases, injured veterans, stroke victims, people with chronic conditions. The medical potential is huge."
View the full article at FightAging
